1. Field of the Invention
This invention concerns authorizing recording of a telephone communication, and in one aspect concerns automatically associating a key with the recording that authorizes its transfer.
2. Related Art
In recent years there has been tremendous growth in telecommunications technology. Even though cell phone high-speed data services are only just beginning, there are reportedly already 130 million cell phones in use in the United States as of mid-2002. The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, a trade group, reports that in the year 2002 billable cell phone calling will exceed half a trillion minutes. Due to the nature of their use, it is particularly useful to include in cell phones a message recording functionality. Another message recording telecommunications technology, voicemail, predates the mass proliferation of cell phones, but the use of voicemail continues to rapidly increase. Despite the spread of cell phones and voicemail, there has not been a correspondingly great increase in user aids for managing these two telecommunications technologies. Consequently, a need exists for improving that management, and particularly for improving management of integrated cell phone and voicemail use.
The foregoing need is addressed in the present invention. According to a method form of the invention, a method for authorizing recording of a telephone communication includes determining if permission has been granted to record a telephone communication in a telephone call. A communication in the telephone call is recorded by a message-recording apparatus for a first caller""s telephone responsive to receiving permission for the recording from a second caller""s telephone. A key is associated with the recording. The key authorizes transferring the recording to another message-recording apparatus.
Objects, advantages, additional aspects and other forms of the invention will become apparent upon reading the following detailed description and upon reference to the accompanying drawings.